Newly Minted Butterfly

"The people of this world are like the three butterflies in front of a candle's flame.

 The first one went closer and said, ' I know about love.' 

The second one touched the flame lightly with his wings and said, ' I know how love's fire can burn.'

The third one threw himself into the heart of the flame and was consumed. 

He alone knows what true love is." 

~rumi

The yellow splashed monarch girl swirls back sideways then across and down and I wonder what it is like to be a newly minted butterfly? Seems she is both aimless and joyful as she flits past me on her first butterfly day of this almost springtime. Is she missing her multitude of caterpillar's feet bouncing on air trying out her new wings? I wonder if she still has her caterpillar eyes; if this is her maiden voyage out and about? 

What is it like to know so well how to slink, crawl and stick slowly forward from branch to leaf and have new 'fucking' wings to deal with at the same time? I know something of losing my footing. But I know little about finding out I have wings. 

How is it to awaken from a long cold dark night, unfurl your sails, and let the wind catch them and carry you away. That effortless first flight must feel so abnormal! Can a butterfly scream? Can she fly and see herself flying at the same time? 

I wonder what it is like to be a newly minted butterfly letting go of her past and floating on air? She doesn't eat the same things she used to eat either. Munching leaves seems to be impossible now. Is she worried she will starve to death right before she accidentally bumps into her very first flower, proboscis extended, having her first taste of nectar so sweet?

It must be a time of great confusion and amazing discovery all at once... I guess I do know a little about what it is like to find out I have wings. And, now that I think about it - yes I can fly and see myself flying at the same time. For this awareness I am grateful. It helps to carry me higher and farther than I have ever been before. And I scream a lot less now!


Have you ever experienced the awkwardness of finding out you've got wings?

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Moving On

"Stop thinking so much. It is alright NOT to have all the answers."

When I think about moving on I am stymied by the shear weight of the task. The letting go of old things, the sorting and packing. The gargatuan schematic that has to be created so everthing gets done right, with a place for everything and everthing in it's new place. 

When I feel about moving on I recognize the immediate appropriateness of allowing, even celebrating, change in all things. Then I can collapse my bag of worries and sorrows and get excited by the amazing new adventure before me. 

I imagine both ot these ideas are True for me. They carry me forward. They both have their place in my world. One pragmatic and one more lofty. I think I will give into adventure, it will make packing up so much more fun!

How do you support your soul's self when faced with moving on?

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Summoning What Really Matters

Okay, let's take a moment and use all our powers of imagination. Let's pretend for the next 10 minutes. Let's crank up our happiness quotient as if we are children making things up just to try things on and see how they feel… just for the fun of it.

Are you there with me? Is your sense of wonder and excitement palpable? Is your heart racing fast like mine is? Okay - now in this creative feast of a moment pretend your wildest dream has just come true! 

...hey what just happened? 

My imagination just totally shutdown. And my excitement just dropped off a cliff. I had no idea how hard this was until I actually tried it. Turns out imagining as attained your most amazing hoped for outcome in a pretend moment of exaltation is r-e-a-l-l-y scary! To hold space for this kind of completeness, I must confess, is way passed my abilities right now. 

Maybe I need to work up to this "imagination challenge" by first pretending I just read a great book in which the hero made it through some horrible gauntlet and then finally achieved her heart's desire. Perhaps right now that is the best I can do - see my dream as happening to somebody else who is not only NOT ME, but NOT EVEN REAL!
Oh but…

...wouldn't it be grand to feel the way the hero feels - to feel the foggy giddiness of pure joy that eclipses all other joys? To allow my body to fall back in a beautiful crush of surrender and elation knowing nothing else mattered and I could die happy knowing that I have missed out on NOTHING. Wouldn't it feel fabulous to have finally got that which my soul has been demanding for so so long!

Yes, yes, yes, I feel it now. It feels warm in the middle of my chest. It feels like vast and never ending pink and green BLISS.

Hey! I did it! I imagined it!

I guess the trick is to let go of the mind's particulars, the never ending detailed plans, and just work our imagination muscle long and hard enough until our thoughts find their way to (or from) our hearts.

Feeling blissful emotions creates electrical charges you know. Whether these charges arise organically from a reaction to real world circumstance or whether they are actively summoned from a deep well of conscious imagination the energy is exactly the same. 

This is the energy that manifests desire into form. This fundamental understanding is the driver that churns dreams into reality. If this is new information you may find it difficult at first to believe, but it does get easier with practice. And I am convinced if we can begin a practice of dreaming and freely feeling our dreams, the rest will take care of itself.

Experiment and see. Summon your child-like self again. It will be fun, I promise.


What have you got to lose?
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Unpack Your Love

"I believe we are all held safely by Love."

"Unpack your Love" is what came through the meditations. "Unpack it. Open it. See into all it's light and shadow.  Inspect all that is included in your thinking about Love." 

My Love includes Attraction, Sex, Parenting, Kindness, Hurt, Compassion, Self-Loathing, Abandonment, Attachment and Detachment, Unconditional Trust, Grief, Joy and sushi! I guess this is NOT a carry-on bag?

I had only experienced Love like an ON/OFF switch. I loved my husband and he loved me. That was it! But I never knew how much Love could grow, that Love takes many forms, and that Love can show up in many different ways. Then Life and Death circumstances showed up and taught me more about Love. 

Experiencing my husband's complete surrender to an illness and his complete trust in me to care for him changed me. I saw how friends, new and old, supported us. In this way we have all been changed. And when Mike died I came to know him in another way. This changed me too. 

It was the hardest work I have ever done, but he and all my friends helped me to live again. Slowly I have come back from Hell. Slowly I have gotten to really know my authentic self. And it is Love in all these many forms that has shown me the way. 

Love begets more of itself; I have seen this. And I have experienced how Love surrounds and dwells inside all things. And through all of this I have felt Love get bigger and bigger and bigger. And it makes me wonder, "Just how big can Love get?"

To some this may sound cliche and simplistic. To others it may seem impossible. But Love grows exponentially when you nuture it. This is my Truth and to this day this Truth undergirds all my doings.

My own path is still uncertain, the details on how to make my dreams come true are fuzzy, but the clarity of how Love serves to guide my way is crystal clear. To this I am completely reverent. 

Gary Zukav, author of Seat of the Soul says, "Reverence is engaging in a form and a depth of contact with Life that is well beyond the shell of form and into essence."

I believe holding reverance for Love has caused me to look for Love in every circumstance. And in doing so Love teaches me to listen for it's lesson. This reverence for Love, in all it's forms, involves caring for my own well being first... and from this creates a great compassion for everyone else. This way instead of being ruled by or resistant to life's happenings I am moved forward by Love's immense power. Love has shown up in many forms for me over and over like this. In this way I have moved mountains.

I can move these mountains because Love has shown me they do not exist. 

What resides inside your ideas of Love?

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Becoming a Magician

"This is how I want to spend my life, 

collaborating with forces of inspiration 

I can neither see, nor prove, nor command, nor understand." 

~elizabeth gilbert from her book Big Magic. 

My life is everything I make it. In this way I am a magician!

Magician suggests things like: amazing feats, extreme skill, and secret slight of hand. I view a magician as one who grasps the unseen and harnesses it to become reality. My magical talents are derived from common sense knowledge, everyday emotion, consistent practice and unconditional trust that all is well.

At the highest level of interpretation, magic indicates there is an intricate and complex web of influences that binds the Universe to itself, and to everything else. So, for me, magic is essentially about communication, but on subtler levels...beyond the material world.

If you want to magically manifest your heart's desire into a mundane world, you will have to come to terms with the actuality, the workings and the efficient manipulation of this web, understanding its laws and vagaries. This web is what causes so-called 'coincidences', or those freak connections that we make right when we need them most. It is this system that brings the teacher to the student at exactly the right time, puts the very book we need on the bookshelf just when we needed it, draws the right person, website, or blog into our lives at the opportune moment.

Therefore it is essential, in order to achieve your highest possible destiny, that you do the work toward understanding this web of life. And in so doing, you too will become a team player... one who manifests all manner of things for your highest good and the highest good of others.

You can start today by experimenting with the way this web works. Begin by becoming aware of thoughts you are transmitting to yourself and others. What we put out eventually finds its way back to us - colored by everything it has touched along the way. This is the single most practical reason for positive thinking!

We need to consider our overall direction too. Are we doing things to actually fulfill our aspirations? We need to look at how every single action we take can be made into an act of magic. People miss this concept all the time. Begin today the practice of holding this idea in the forefront of your mind. Pay attention today how this practice alone changes the way you approach your daily activities.

Acting with intent is another practice you can begin starting right now. For instance, if you cook a meal, cook it with the intention that it will sustain the very spirit of those who eat it. And back it up with deep abiding feelings. If you do the washing up, do it remembering that you are washing away the stains of the world. And make sure to back it up with the love and good feelings of being one who serves. If you are driving to see a friend, regard the journey as another step in your growth and development. Feel the excitement and wonder of the multitude of unknown good and gracious possibilities to come.

Get the idea?

Practicing everything with intent and deep abiding feeling plugs you into the clear and crystalline flow of your Emotions. Your power to manifest lies here - for Emotion is more than just a passing party or storm that happens to you. Emotion is energy. Emotion is that which connects you, a mortal human being, to the unseen spirit, the eternal spirit part of your being.

We are meant to use Emotion to create. Taking back this power takes daily practice. Daily practice strengthens this power. And...from personal experience, let me tell you it really gets the mundane stuff done quickly, efficiently and with a fuller heart than I had ever imagined!

Lastly, when working with your Emotions to become one who manifests, remember one thing - if you aren't happy with your life the way you've made it so far, accepting your inner magician is one way to access your power within. Working with your inner magician will make your life something brighter than it is and something way more satisfying.


Are you ready to begin?

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All Things are Possible

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible" ~walt disney

I am making room for the possibility of bliss. I am letting go of old constraints. I have reasoned that without opening up to the idea of bliss I would not be able to approach it. 

So I am making room to be in bliss, to become blind to that which harnesses me to old ways of being. I have not come this far through the muck and I have not restoratively lain by the sidelines for these many long nights to not get up and get going now that I am just that - restored.

Coming to a conclusion. Concluding a completion. I must be walking through this inner door and hanging up my old hat. I am unencumbered without moss on my feet. I have groaned and growed up. My peace is in knowing that now is the time to move on.  

Thank you for helping me see and be aware of these things for without this constant inner vision not much could manifest. And with this inner vision all things are possible!

Can you see inside yourself well enough...yet?

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More Truth about Love

"I love you and it is no concern of yours."~anonymous 

Perhaps you do not experience yourself this way, but my thoughts of you contain joy, wonder and adventure. These, of course, are my experiences. They come from me and you are not actually in them. But you reflect these feelings within me. And I like that!

And there is NO OBLIGATION for you to be anything other than who you believe yourself to be. You owe me nothing. My joy, my sense of wonder and my cultivation of adventure are mine alone. And in letting go of YOU I am somehow transformed and able to see this more clearly. 

This is the part that causes trouble. This is where many folks get tripped up because we believe our love resides in the other, is attached to the other, and depends on the other for us to feel it. And this gives rise to us holding back, hiding or being afraid.

I have experienced the opposite to be true. When I become transparent and vulnerable I am not losing anything. I will never be in danger as my feelings of love reside within me. Love is a choice. Love is my practice.

Being transparent and vulnerable is where the treasure is. This is where the growing happens. This is where we are each eachother's teacher and eachother's student. In it's purest form this is how LOVE works…in our own Joy, Compassion and Wholeness...without grasping, without attachment and without fear.

Oh, I know it ain't easy! It requires a lot of internal work and a real commitment to practice to get to these places of deep abiding Trust.

But I Trust this is the Truth. And I know you are my teacher in this. Thank you for showing me the way...one day at a time.

Who teaches you stuff? And what have you learned today?

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